The Great Desert Excursions
The Great Desert Excursions are a series of quests undertaken in the quasi-historical myth of the humans living on the Kurosekan Plateau. From the Monastery of the Sun and Stars in the Magros Mountains, there have been several recorded missions to discover what exists beyond the seemingly endless Redwall Desert, if anything at all. Historical Record At the monastery, there is a mural depicting each of the supposed quests, and all but the 2 oldest were painted when the actual events were supposed to occur. There are documents in vaults of Kuroseki that list death from the excursion at several points of history, but very few match up with the mythical events. No record of the great leaders of the second and third excursions has been found. The leader of the first expedition is well known to history as he was a prince of Kuroseki and his death in the first excursion created the succession issues of the 8th century b.s.r. Only the most recent, the fifth, was well documented by a historian who returned from the excursion. Since the fifth desert excursion resulted in absolute failure in 129 b.s.r., no new excursions have taken place. Beyond these limited details, very little can be said about what actually was found in the desert. The Myth The First Excursion The tales states that in 803 b.s.r., the age was filled with powerful beings. The age still had many hidden treasures and dungeons to loot, so the now powerful city of Kuroseki began to have an influx of adventurers. The Prince, Gareth Aurelius, was a grand troublemaker of the time, often organizing groups of random adventurers to join him for grand parties or fighting gangs in the streets. His carousing is said to have been so grand that he was a personal friend with the God Cayden Cailean. His father the King, Gorlois Aurelius Magnus, was known as a very sober figure, and came up with a grand quest to give his son something to do that would not exhaust his coffers so quickly. The King made a grand oration from atop the Walls of Kuroseki, stating that he was calling for a grand quest. With the patronage of himself and the abbot of the Monastery of the Sun and Stars in the west, he would organize a grand excursion into the Redwall Desert, so that they may learn what lies beyond it and the great lands to settle beyond. So by the late summer of 803 b.s.r., a group of hardy adventurers 500 strong, led by the prince himself, was sent to the Monastery to meet with the abbot and gain the equipment needed to traverse the mountains and the desert. By late autumn, the mountains had been crossed, and the vastness of the desert lay before them. The men decided on sending a small force of 15 out into the desert first to see if there was anything for the first days travel, so as to not be caught unawares. 7 days later the men came back with tales that there was nothing as far as the eye could see at this part of the desert, and many of the men grew frightened that they might go into the desert to never return. Prince Gareth is said to have given a rousing speech to the men that they would be the first to enter a brave new world, and those first to find the land beyond the desert would be given lands and kingdoms of their very own, with their descendents ruling for countless generations. This speech made many a man's heart surge with pride, and they called for the excursion to begin before dawn on the morrow. For the next month the men travelled by horse without seeing more than sand dunes. When the water supply began to run low, Gareth knew that a mutiny would soon occur, so he begged them three more days to find a sign that they were near the end of the desert. At the eve on the last day given, the worst of the worst occurs. A swarm of 5 brass dragons attacked the weakened warriors, with very little resistance to their feasting. These fell beasts killed nearly 200 of the warriors before a rescue came. Some 20 human riders came from across a hill astride beasts unknown to any alive. They were alike to horses with the necks of snakes, and the body of a cow. These riders drew blades of obsidian and brass, and called down the power of some god foreign to the true gods of Gernon. They rode the wind with an astral glow, and smote the beasts with slices to the back of the neck. Category:Kurosekan Myth